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Realm of Fear (episode)
Lieutenant Barclay faces his fear of transporting, but now he thinks that he's being attacked by a creature inside the transporter beam. Summary The starship responds to the stricken vessel . The crew of the Yosemite seems to have disappeared when they beam over. There's a mystery to be solved here, which gradually unravels itself aboard the USS Enterprise. As the landing party prepares to beam over, Transporter Chief O'Brien informs them that due to disturbances in the plasma field, there may be problems in transporting over. When Lieutenant Barclay hears this, he becomes very nervous and refuses to transport over, leaving the transporter room. Barclay has always been mortified about transporters. He spoke to Counselor Troi about his troubles and she introduced him to a relaxing technique known as plexing. "Hmmm, plexing," an excited Barclay exclaimed to Troi, "Very relaxing. You know what? I feel better already!" said Barclay, completely unconvinced and still tapping himself on the neck as he walked out the door. Returning to the transporter room, Barclay prepares himself for the ride. He's comforted a little by O'Brien, who tells him about his fear of spiders, which he conquered by crawling past twenty Talarian hook spiders. Comforted, Barclay beams over to the Yosemite. After collecting fragments, Commanders La Forge and Data and Lieutenant Barclay beam back to the Enterprise. During the transport, Barclay had an awful vision of a worm swimming in the matter stream and biting his arm. He steps out a changed man, fearful – life will never be the same again. Plagued by what he saw, he is constantly analyzing himself for disturbing illnesses, drinking lots of water, using the ship's computer and seeking out Dr. Beverly Crusher. He had previously diagnosed himself with transporter psychosis and told the good doctor this. Smiling, Dr. Crusher tells the lieutenant to stay away from Starfleet Medical Database and Barclay, "you don't have transporter psychosis". Barclay is suffering from pain, with affected areas of his body lighting up in blue flashes as if they were in the transporter. Barclay ascribes this to his transporter psychosis and keeps quiet about it. Meanwhile, in engineering La Forge and Data have run tests on the plasma, discovering that it contains quasi-energy microbes. They attempt to recreate conditions on the Yosemite if they had decided to beam a portion of the plasma stream on board to study it. They first take the precaution of setting up force field around the container. Once the plasma field is beamed aboard the Enterprise it explodes, though the explosion is contained within the forcefield. Barclay collapses, and is taken to sickbay. Dr Crusher discovers that some of the quasi-energy microbes from the Yosemite have got into Barclay's bloodstream during transport back to the Enterprise and this is what has been causing him pain, and all the other symptoms. La Forge and O'Brien decided that the transporter could be used, once proper adjustments were made, to remove the microbes from Barclay's body. Once Barclay is inside the beam, he sees the creepy creatures again. In a mad rush of courageousness, the lieutenant appears to catch one of the creatures in his arms and doesn't let go. When he rematerializes, we see that he has another person in his grasp, one of the Yosemite crew members. Barclay gets up and tells the others that there are three more crew members caught in the matter stream. He sends a security team led by Worf in to save the rest of the Yosemite crew from the transporter. Barclay explains to La Forge and the chief that while the crew of the USS Yosemite were trying to cleanse themselves of the quasi-energy microbes, their Human patterns got trapped in the transporter and they couldn't escape. Worf and the team return holding the other three members of the Yosemite crew. Afterwards, O'Brien meets Barclay at Ten Forward, and shows him his pet Lycosan tarantula, whom he adopted after getting over his arachnophobia. He gets up to grab some drinks, while the tarantula crawls up Barclay's arm, and Barclay nervously waits for O'Brien to come back. Background Information * Brannon Braga enjoyed writing this episode as it related to his own fear of air travel. (ST: TNG Companion) * The red giant and white dwarf in the Igo sector seen in this episode were originally from and later re-used as a similar stellar phenomenon in the Topin system in . * O'Brien's collar insignia changed from lieutenant (two pips) to chief (one black pip) in this episode. According to the Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion, this was done to reinforce the plot point that lieutenant J.G. Barclay outranks O'Brien. See also: Miles O'Brien - Rank Inconsistencies. * There is a continuity error in this episode. When Data, Barclay and La Forge are talking in engineering, the damaged sample container from the Yosemite has been reconstructed. Later, after La Forge tells Barclay to take some time off, the sample container is destroyed again. * When Barclay asks La Forge if anything happened to him in the transporters he denies it. However, La Forge and Ro Laren were the victims of a transporter accident in . * The mutli-level Jefferies tube set, directly attached to main engineering appears for the first time in this episode. *This is the first and only time O'Brien's pet tarantula, Christina, is ever seen or mentioned. Video and DVD releases * UK VHS release (two-episode tapes, CIC Video): Volume 64, . * As part of the TNG Season 6 DVD collection. Links and References Guest Stars *Colm Meaney as Miles O'Brien *Patti Yasutake as Alyssa Ogawa *Dwight Schultz as Reginald Barclay Co-Stars *Renata Scott as Hayes (credited as "Admiral") *Thomas Belgrey as a ''Yosemite'' crewmember *Majel Barrett as the computer voice Uncredited Co-Stars *David Keith Anderson as Ensign Armstrong *Lena Banks as an operations division ensign *Michael Braveheart as Ensign Martinez *Cameron as Ensign Kellogg *Cullen Chambers as a civilian *Tracee Lee Cocco as Lieutenant j.g. Jae *Holiday Freeman as a command division officer *Christie Haydon as a command division ensign *Kerry Hoyt as an operations division officer *Keith Rayve as a command division officer *Richard Sarstedt as a command division ensign *Unknown performers as **Ensign Dern **Joshua Kelly **[[USS Yosemite personnel#Yosemite crewmembers|Three Yosemite crewmembers]] **Command division lieutenant References 2209; away team; biofilter; Cardassian; cardiostimulator; Christina; Delinia II; distortion field; Ferengi; Heisenberg compensator; Igo sector; imaging scanner; ionic interference; Jefferies tube; Kelly, Joshua; kiloquad; Lycosa tarantula; medical tricorder; Olafson; pattern buffer; plasma streamer; plexing; quasi-energy microbe; resonance frequency scan; sample container; Starfleet Medical Database; stellar cartography; systems engineer; Talarian hook spider; Titus IV; transporter; transporter psychosis; Transporter Theory; VISOR; ''Yosemite'', USS; Zayra IV |next= }} Category:TNG episodes de:Todesangst beim Beamen es:Realm of Fear nl:Realm of Fear